Daily discussion post: Games people play

[liv]

I'm thinking about play at the moment. For me games are an important part of how I socialize, and I'm working out how much of that translates to the social isolation world. Or, as some community leaders have been framing it, the world of social connection with physical distancing.

So let's talk about what we do for play, and what we're playing during the pandemic. Here are some prompt questions, but feel free to talk about anything game-related!

Are games part of the way you interact with children? Have you rediscovered games as an adult? Or are you playful in some other way that doesn't involve formal, structured games?

Do you play board and card games? Are they a special occasion thing, perhaps once a year when the family get together for Christmas, or a regular hobby? What's the best classic game in your opinion? Are you taking part in the contemporary board game revival? Do you have a favourite, or can you suggest a game that deserves more attention?

What about video games? Do you play phone games (and if so, are there any where you would like to connect with other players and add new friends)? PC games? Who's finally getting to that long queue of stuff you downloaded when it was on special offer? Console games? Multi player or single, classic, retro or modern, big tough tens of hours games or casual? Do you have kids who play video games, and do you approve or need to restrict how much and what they play?

Do you take part sports for fun and play? Or do you follow any sports? Which teams are you into?

I know there are lots of kinds of games I haven't listed, all the various forms of role-playing and improv games, gamified self-improvement stuff like Duolingo and HabitRPG, party games, you name it!

And if you feel like talking about it, do tell us how you've adapted your gaming and play to new circumstances. What works virtually, what needs adapting? What are you reminiscing about or watching in the archives when there are no live matches? What have you come back to after a break if you're one of the people spending more time indoors these days? What are you looking forward to playing when the world goes back to normal?

Comments

[luckyzukky]

my favorite game is definitely animal crossing: new leaf for the 3ds. i know it's generic of me since i'm a girl but i've never really been a gamer, it's just not my thing (besides obsessive minecraft playing for like 5 years straight lmao). ac:nl is really calming and chill though, it's really fun growing your town, talking to the villagers, decorating your character and home, etc. i haven't actually played it in a while but i started again yesterday because animal crossing: new horizons revived my interest in it (and i can't get ac:nh for a while now because of covid-19 so i'm trying to stay satisfied with ac:nl hehe).

i've also been playing this phone game called two dots for a while now, it's a really well designed puzzle game about connecting dots and i know that sounds super boring but it's addictive. i also play love nikki, but i tend to play it for a while and then take a long break because it's one of those stressful rpg games (but also a dress up game? it's cool though). i'm in the break phase right now lol

BOARD GAMES

[mothwing]

Great topic! I love games. I really enjoyed HabitRPG! Otherwise I played PC games a fair bit a decade ago (HL2, Portal, WoW, that sort of thing) and a lot of the classic point and click adventures in the nineties (Indiana Jones, Monkey Island, Loom). Other than that, no PC gaming for me.

When I was a teenager, I was into pen&paper RPGs, but after an incident with one of the players my group disbanded and I've never really gotten back into it again. I really, really loved it while we were still doing it, though.

It matters a lot to me if the game has got a good narrative or not. If the narrative is good, I'll give almost anything a go. That's also why I never play cardgames, even though Crocky loves them.

I didn't know there was a classic board game revival going on, but you could definitely say I'm taking part in it. My favourite game at the moment is Legends of Andor:

And we've played it a lot, including the fanmade campaigns, some of which are better than the originals. It's basically a table top RPG in wich a book is your GM. A bit like HeroQuest, another favourite. Forbidden Island is another good one, as is Evolution. Oh, and Mice and Mystic rules, too.
If anyone's got good board game recommendations, I'd be grateful.

I know that technically, there is a way to play D&D online, but so far, I haven't been brave enough. Whenever I didn't play with friends, I ended up in groups of all former hardcore players who were all men. That was in real life, though, so maybe it's different online... has anyone any experience with that?

[brumeier]

I'm a very mild-mannered person normally. But you get me into a game and I get cutthroat really fast. LOL! Lots of smack talk and a desire to win at all costs. I don't know why.

Sadly, the only games I play these days are on my phone. But when my son was young (he's 16 now and only into video games) we used to play board games, like Hi-Ho Cherry-O and Candyland, or card games like Go Spidey (Go Fish, only with Spiderman).

When we visit my aunt, though, he'll play Mexican Train with us, which is a dominoes game.

As a kid, I remember playing games all the time with my family. Scrabble, Risk, electronic Battleship, Monopoly, Guesstures, Scattergories, Life, Phase 10, dice, Rummy 500, Clue. My brother always got a new game for Christmas and the whole family would play it together. Ah, those were the days.

For a brief period of time my ex and I were having Family Game Night with my brother and his ex. Harry Potter Clue and Pirate's Dice, mostly. Those were fun.

I also dabbled in some tabletop gaming with my ex and his cousin. Mage Knights. He tried to get me into video games, but I'm not really any good at them. Atari I could do, with just the joystick and one button, but game controllers now are way too complicated. Just about the only one I could manage was Worms: Armageddon.

[annofowlshire]

In terms of social gaming, my husband and I are into LARPs (that’s how we met!), table top RPGs, and board games. These form a core for our social life—regularly having people over for table top games, board game nights, etc.

In the current circumstances, we’ve been playing board games together a bit, and LARPs are kind of out at the moment (although now I’m envisioning a LARP scenario that takes place through a group video call), but I’ve been nudging my husband to start a “table top” campaign using Roll d20 or similar. He’s keen, but has some other things to wrap up first.

I haven’t for the last decade or so been much into PC/console/mobile games, but we’re looking to try some “couch co-op” console games and he’s been doing some online PC games with friends.

We’d like to play games with our kiddo, but he’s only 23 months so he’s not quite ready to join us ^_^

Duolingo

[redbird]

I'm mostly, and deliberately, ignoring the gamified parts of Duolingo, at least for now. "Maintain your streak" is gamified talk for "do at least a little every day," and I want to keep that up, because it's easier to maintain that sort of habit than "I will do French at least four days a week" or the like.

I was looking at the "league promotion" bit when I first started, because I had a bunch of free time, and found the early lessons extremely easy. Right now, I'm doing intro French as much for listening practice as vocabulary. It's still at the point where I know most of the words before Duolingo "teaches" them to me, many via Spanish cognates or borrowed English (it has me practicing that the French for "weekend" is "week-end") or picked up from menus and signs in Montreal. But I can't go too fast right now, because typing can strain my left hand.

I suspect the gamification would work better for me if I was doing this with people, friends or in a class, or if all those "lingots" I earn for things like meeting my daily goal were usable for anything I remotely wanted.

[aome]

My teenage son enjoys games, and will sometimes ask for me to play something with him. We play Payday, Life, Sorry, Clue (if his sister is free to join us), Storming the Castle (Princess Bride game - if we get at least 1 more person, makes it more fun), the dice game Farkle and the card-based games Skip-Bo, Uno and Phase 10.

I especially love word-based games like "25 words or less" Taboo, Boggle, Pictionary and things like that, but since my son has a reading/writing learning disability that makes it harder, and some of those games require teams and thus more players than I am likely to have interested at any one time. My best friends used to host game nights and those were special favorites of mine when we played, but I haven't played any of those in ages.

As a teen I loved Pac Man/Ms Pac Man, Frogger and some of those other classics. My BIL just got a Nintendo Switch with some of the classic games but I haven't tried playing any of them.

Not hugely into sports - I run and do martial arts (and I am SO looking forward to going back to my martial arts classes when things calm down; training by myself sucks), but I did enjoy shooting basketballs with my son in the driveway, until our hoop was damaged in a storm last year. We also have a Wii but I haven't played that in awhile either; my favorite game there, hands down, was bowling.

For the past year or two, I've enjoyed playing "Word Cookies" on my phone - rearranging letters into new words - Yahtzee and a word category game called "Red Herring." Those are my main forms of daily play these days.

[liseuse]

I'm an only child and board games weren't really a huge part of my childhood, other than Scrabble. We played a lot of Scrabble. Mostly my mother and I played a lot of Rummy and Beggar My Neighbour (this game takes forever if you're playing it with two people by the way), and occasional games of dominoes. Currently a friend and I are playing Words With Friends to while away some of the time.

I love Monopoly but because my mother hated it I very rarely got to play. Eventually we reached an agreement that we could play it every other Christmas.

I have played video games about three times in my entire life. Unsurprisingly I am very bad. We didn't have a tv for most of the time I was a child/early teen, so I first encountered video games when I went to university. I do currently have Round The World in 80 Days in my Steam account and this might be the thing that gets me to actually make it around the world!

Board games have definitely become more of a thing in my adult life. I live alone so don't own that many of them - I have a copy of Ticket To Ride and Harry Potter: Hogwarts Battle, both of which are a lot of fun. But friends own lots of them and it's always fun playing them when I visit.

I got the following link via an email newsletter last week which seems helpful for people who enjoy playing games but can't right now! - https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Dwn5ZUX3WiCnod6xDboTRzZ7fUol6IWSwPs4hXLDxz4/htmlview?sle=true - it's a spreadsheet of various games and how to play them with other people/solo.

[shipperslist]

Back when I was a kid, we used to play cards and board games. It’s something I sometimes miss because board games with just two players don’t work that well. We have Carcassonne we sometimes play and I should introduce Mikado to my kid at some point.

I got briefly addicted to Sims when I was pregnant with my kid but haven’t touched it since. Nowadays I mostly play words with friends and not much else.

[pensnest]

Monopoly was, when I was a child, a frustrating part of my life, as for some reason my little sister *always* won. More recently, my Beast taught himself two or three new computer languages by programming home versions of 'Cluedo' in them; this often involved him, aided by the machine, playing against me. I learned a great deal about how to play, and I don't think the computer ever beat me! But he's a World of Warcraft addict now, and Cluedos no more.

My daughter introduced me/us to more sophisticated board games, although I'm not a regular. One that turned up early on I now love: that is the delightfully simple Dixit. I love Dixit! A game that involves beautiful and very weird illustrations, and a simple method of keeping score, it only takes a couple of minutes to explain the concept and the rules, so anyone can enjoy it. Playing it with different people gets interesting variations, which makes for a lot of fun (on one memorable occasion, there was general agreement on which card meant 'Sterek'). It'd probably be good entertainment for a family or group of 3 or more stuck at home together.

Cards Against Humanity. I have played this for several years with my regular Camp Sparkle people, and we have made several of our own questions and answers based on our fandom and shared history. Excellent fun, though I suspect not for everyone.

Camp Sparkle also ran the "Add 5 Words Story" for several years, which made for some very bizarre fiction... it would actually work online. Hmm. Though it might be too scary for current circumstances—we got some *very* weird shit in those stories!

I like playing Pictionary with the family, but one Christmas a few years back we had Epic Fail. My husband and son made a pretty good team, my daughter and bro-in-law also did very well. My father-in-law and I got *nowhere*, because he could not even throw out random words to guess what my drawings were - and I'm really not bad at drawing - and when it was his turn to draw, the pencil would quiver above the paper until time ran out. Can't guess with no material… so we made no progress at all. Most frustrating!

On my phone, I have an epic collection of card games, mostly solitaire but some played against the computer, which constitute probably 80-90% of my phone use! It's called Card Shark, and I recommend the collection. I've discovered several new solitaire games in a range of difficulties.

On the whole, I'm not a great player of non-solitary games (I like my Killer Sudoku puzzles) so I'm not missing the gaming interaction.

[jesse_the_k]

I grew up playing Scrabble and Charades with my family, Monopoly and Milles Bornes with my peers. When I left home I got sucked into a card playing vortex: Sheepshead and Euchre, Pinochle, Bid Whist, Hearts, Spades. The first two are Northern European games with elaborate specialized vocabulary (German or Danish, depending on who taught me) as well as novel card rank (J Q K A 10 9 8 7).

When I need soothing, I reach for super-simple games requiring repetitive motion and no thought whatsoever (no reading, for example: just color and shape cues). My first love was a Classic Daleks freeware on System 6 for my 512K Mac. Currently I play 2048 Hex on my iPad.

Playing with my dog is always soothing -- here's MyGuy playing that deep strategy game "stick."

https://vimeo.com/217412485 password is "bella"

[tozka]

One thing I've done differently from my usual gaming habits is buy a new-release game the same week it came out (Animal Crossing). Usually I wait a few years to see if the price goes down, but I bought it early this time specifically because I wanted to feel connected to everyone online who already has it. Like, join in on the community while it's still new and excited!

(My copy isn't coming until Wednesday, boo.)

[kalium]

I guess my one big true game would be the original Petz run, which I still mod for - and I've been making some more lately. I've been playing for twenty years now, even though the series ended in... 2002, I think? It still has a very devoted fanbase.

And I'm breeding pokemon as usual, but I've been doing that for a while - trying to get perfect 6IV pokes takes time.

[readera]

I have been enjoying pokemon go and dots & co on my phone. They have done some updates for pokemon go that make it more playable so that is nice.

[althea_valara]

I'm a gamer - a good portion of my journal is talking about video games. There's two that take most of my gaming time:

Final Fantasy Brave Exvius - a mobile gacha game that has an excellent large cast of characters. If anybody wants to add me there, my ID is 965,432,229 and my game name is AltheaV. I really love the story in this game! Since it's a gacha game, it's free to play, with options to spend money if you'd like. My income is tiny right now, so I have not spent a single dime on the game, and yet I've done some of the hardest content there is.

Final Fantasy XIV - it's an MMORPG. I started playing in September and have been playing daily since. It also has an excellent story! I'm Althea Valara on the Coeurl server, Crystal data center.

I also like casual mobile games. I play the various Flow Free games daily; over 1000 days daily streak in the original version. I sometimes play Wordscapes on the weekends.

I've currently got a run of Final Fantasy V in the works for Esuna for Corona.

I was an avid board and card gamer when I was a kid. Lots of Monopoly and Canasta with my younger sister. I miss those days. I rarely play those games now. Occasionally my mom and I will play Canasta or Cribbage, but that's rare.

I went to a board game group when I was in my 20s, and picked up some good games there that I otherwise would have never heard of. Ricochet Robot is a good workout for the brain that tests your spatial acilities, and the game can be played solo. Acquire is a game of corporations; you buy stock and merge companies. I also remember playing Citadels but it's been so long since I've played that I've forgotten most of the game. I do remember being good at it, though!

I used to watch Wil Wheaton's TableTop YouTube series, and saw a lot of neat games I'd love to play some day. The one that interested me the most is Castle Panic. It's cool because it's a collaborative game: everyone works together to defend the castle from invaders. You all win if you're successful, and all lose if all the castle walls get knocked down.

Finally: I've been passing around a link to Cheap Ass Games. They've always had low-priced board games, but they offer many of their classic games for FREE on their site. Just download and print! I can recommend Devil Bunny Needs a Ham.

[petrea_mitchell]

Board games: I love Euro-style boardgames! I don't have a regular group to play them with, so I was looking forward to the local gaming con this coming weekend to play a ton of them. Obviously that's not happening.

RPGs: I've been in the Pathfinder Society for 3 years now, mostly playing online since our local chapter only runs weekly games at one store on the other side of town. So no changes there.

Card games: I got into KeyForge last year. I've been playing every couple weeks at the local gaming store. There's an unofficial site, The Crucible, where one can play, but I've found it has negative effects on my in-person play because the software takes care of things a little too automatically that I wind up forgetting in person.

(What's KeyForge? I like to describe it as Richard Garfield's apology for Magic: The Gathering. Buy one deck, play that deck, no alterations. If you get bored with it, buy another deck to play.)

Video games: Any era, as long as it's turn-based and has a strong story component. Now that I'm stuck at home for a while, I've decided it's time to start on Fire Emblem: Three Houses.

[ninetydegrees]

I'm a gamer too and have rediscovered board games as an adult thanks to Wil Wheaton's Tabletop and Habitica. Sadly most of my games are currently at the school I work at as I co-manage the board game club there.

I've never really stopped playing video games although I moved away from console games quite early to venture into the wonderful world of PC indie games but am back to Switch games only now that we get more variety there. Currently playing Dragon Quest Builders 2 and Two Point Hospital, planning to tackle Xenoblade 2 next or maybe New Super Mario Bros. U Deluxe, and mostly playing Food Fantasy on my tablet.

I must say confinement hasn't really changed my gaming habits as I mostly like playing alone (or playing the same game as someone else then talk about it) and don't watch let's plays these days.

[cynthia1960]

Board games: Ticket to Ride and variants

Mobile games: Neko Atsume, Cat Condo, Furistas Cat Cafe, Bird BnB, Tiny Bird Garden (cats and birbs, yes I love them)

[azurelunatic]

I'm mostly a phone solo/semi-solo gamer for myself.

I have a discontinued Spite & Malice (Skipoid) that I play to help me fall asleep. It's very soothing. I play against the machine on easy.

I Love Hue and I Love Hue Too are lovely (and fiendish) color discernment puzzles. They're meditative for me but won't let me fall asleep. I like to play it while on the phone, because there are no words to distract my words-brain and no audio.

Gems of War is both mobile and Steam; Belovedest and I share an account and take turns playing. It's a match-3 RPG + collectible card game, and we love our guild. Current guild leader is a friend of the family.

The guild activities are daily & weekly, so there's no need to play at a specific time, but we do have a chat.


My partner and their siblings like to play Jackbox, Ticket to Ride, hidden object games, and internet Cards Against Humanity. We do a Google Hangout and someone screen shares the game board. It's great fun.

[magnetic_pole]

I'm feeling very dull in this excellent gaming company. I mostly obsess about the various games published on the New York Times website, espcially:

Spelling Bee, where you're given seven letters and need to arrange them to spell different words (and where one letter needs to be used every time), and...

Set, where you match three of twelve cards that either all have illustrations of a similar number, color, patterns, or shape...or that are all different from each other (I find this second option especially challenging).

I play these first things in the morning over a cup of tea and can't get my day started until they're done. I seem to need to obsess over something, and these are fairly harmless...much better than obsessing over the news first thing.

Fun question! M.

House of Games

[ng_moonmoth]

Spouse and I have a closet overfilled with board games of various descriptions. We participated for several years in a gaming group that met at a pizza parlor near our home until it changed dates and moved.

We have a bunch of games we can't play right now, because they are either only for, or better for, more than two. There are online options for those, but part of the value in game playing for us is the interpersonal interaction, so not right now, thanks. We also have plenty of games that play with two. In that category in our house are multiple Carcassonne variants, a comprehensive set of Ticket To Ride maps, and what's currently getting the most overall play: Azul and Azul: Stained Glass of Sintra. I have also been a tournament bridge player and was able to contend at reasonably high levels; I have stepped away from that for a while for the sake of my mental health.

As far as video games go, spouse thinks of them as a time sink they have no patience for. I am a veteran of thirty years or so where my work entailed pushing buttons to make computers do things (software developer/manager), and I had no desire to do the same thing in my spare time.

Not being overly blessed with the physical skills that competitive sports emphasize, most of my sports activity is of the sort where one can compete against oneself and one's own limitations. I am a fairly regular cyclist who is frequently time trialing against my best time on a familiar route. Tenpin bowling, golf, and skiing are things I have enjoyed in the past.

We are both interested enough in the competitive aspect of sports to find it worth watching, especially when the competition occurs at the highest level. We watch as much for the story as for the outcome. Our interests wind up only casually intersecting US norms. American and most-of-the-rest-of-the-world football are both worth watching; our favorite vent there is bemoaning the porous state of the US men's national team back line, with figuring out just exactly who we should be as a footballing nation close behind. (Much less problem with the women: they're the best in the world for now, and we hope they can manage to stay ahead as the major footballing nations realize that the same things that make their men's teams excellent work for women as well.) Our DVR gets a lot of work during the Olympics and the Tour de France; also the Tour of California (where we live) before it was "put on hiatus" (hope it's not permanent) after last year's race. And if we have an emotional investment in a team in one of the more popular US sports, we'll watch and cheer for them.

[spikedluv]

I love playing cards, but I have no one to play with these days. When I was young I played with my grandmother; she's the one who got me into cards in the first place. Mostly pitch and rummy. Some crazy 8s. During college I had a summer job where they all took lunch/break at the same time and played pinochle. They taught me how to play and I loved it. I don't remember how to play anymore. :( I also liked games like Yahtzee.

These days I mostly play by myself on my phone: Rummy, Solitaire, Pitch (where I curse out my 'partner' all the time, lol), a matching game, a coloring 'game' and more that I cycle through an interest in.

Neko Atsume and Stardew Valley

[binary_sunset]

All queer folks in my age group are well aware of Stardew Valley, a sort of Harvest Moon/Animal Crossing type game that allows you to play as a farmer in a small town in the countryside. Throughout your time in Stardew Valley, you'll help the local economy, fight monsters in the mines, raise plants and animals on your farm, and get to know the surprisingly-deep citizens of Pelican Town. It's just a fun, relaxing game that's wonderful for a bit of escapism. They also added a Co-Op mode about a year ago, which I've been using to connect with my friends! We're kind of spread all over the place, since we're all in Uni, so it's nice to have a virtual space where we can work together and build something lovely! Also it's only $15 on Steam.

The other game I've been playing a lot is Neko Atsume, a Japanese mobile game that went viral a few years back. You basically leave food and toys out for your yard for the local cats, who give you money to buy more food and more toys! Eventually, you'll get all sorts of fun rare cats like Billy the Kitten and Hermeowne. Super simple, but very relaxing and the art style is so cute!